


Eleanor & Sabrina

by daughterofthesun



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Future AU, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 13:40:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11060163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daughterofthesun/pseuds/daughterofthesun
Summary: In the year 2061, a seventy-year-old Louis Tomlinson meets a messy-haired young lad with familiar green eyes on a train and is forced to recall the worst day of his life — the day he lost Harry.





	Eleanor & Sabrina

**Author's Note:**

> If you would've asked me just six months ago if I'd be here, in this year of our Lord 2017, writing a future!AU Larry fic, I would've probably told you about the time I had an asthma attack at the Jonas Brothers World Tour on August 15, 2009.
> 
> Last week my friend tweeted that they wanted to read a Larry fic, and I was like "lol i'll write you a larry fic !!!!" My original plan was to write a parody featuring all the popular slash fiction tropes, but then I got started and it became REAL and I ended up with this monstrosity.
> 
> I've been watching "Grace & Frankie", so that is directly responsible for why this fic is the way that it is.
> 
> Disclaimer: I'm not a Larrie.  
> Disclaimer: I'm so sorry.

_**"DO**_ _**YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!”**_  
  
Normally Louis wouldn’t play the fame card (that’s a lie; he plays it every chance he can get now that he’s of the age to get half price at Applebee’s for dinner.) He normally wouldn’t play the fame card for the hovertrain because he could always just catch the next one in twenty minutes. But he’s going to miss his doctor’s appointment, and he can’t miss this one because he missed the last one, and when he missed the last one he pulled the fame card, and he air-printed a few autographs for some fans in the waiting room, but he still had to reschedule his appointment. He’s seventy now, and there just isn’t a joint in his body that doesn’t squeak and a muscle that doesn’t ache.  
  
The train operator looks young — possibly thirty — and very, very apathetic. “I’unno. You look like every other soggy, white millennial in London. I’m guessing your name’s prolly sum’n like Jaydynn with two ‘Y’s and two ‘N’s?”  
  
Louis takes offense to this because his youngest is named Jaiden with an ‘I’ and an ‘E’. “No, you wanker, I’m Louis F*$%in’ Tomlinson!”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“Louis Tomlinson! The singer!”  
  
“Never heard of you, mate.”  
  
“From One Direction?!”  
  
“ _How_ many erections?”  
  
“ _One_ Direction! We were once the biggest boy band in the entire world!”  
  
“Sorry. I don’t care _what_ direction; I can’t let you on without your chip.”  
  
Louis is about to tell this bloke just where he can stick his chip when a young man sitting in the third row on the left with messy brown hair stands to his rescue. “Hey, mate, look... Just scan my chip.” He dangles the chain from his keys over the operator’s shoulder. “I didn’t take the train yesterday, so I have a free scan. You’re gonna make us all late. He’s just an old man; prolly goin’ to the doctors’.”  
  
Louis is slightly offended until he realizes that the kid is one hundred percent correct in his assumptions. Knowing that this is his last option, he puts on a sad face and hunches his back a bit extra so as to look as old and pathetic as possible.

The operator shrugs. “Prolly a psychiatric doctor. This chap thinks he was in One Direction.”  
  
Louis starts. “So you _’ave_ heard of me!”

Messy Hair gives him a careful look as if to say _“don’t_ _press_ _your_ _luck,”_ but the operator scans Messy Hair’s chip, anyway. He nods Louis onto the train. Louis doesn’t thank either of them.  
  
Louis begins his descent down the aisle of the train to his usual seat — the twelfth from the right. He ignores the stares of the commuters and several holocells and holotabs with cameras aimed at him. Once seated, he prepares for a nice, quiet, forty-minute ride through the city. He closes his eyes.  
  
“ _Ahem_.”  
  
He keeps his eyes closed. Maybe the boy will go away.  
  
“Excuse me, Mr. Tomlinson?”  
  
_Urgh_.  
  
Louis opens his eyes. The messy-haired boy in the green sweater has seated himself in the seat directly across the aisle from him.  
  
“Hey, uh, Mr. Tomlinson. It’s so cool to finally meet you.”  
  
Louis just stares. If he doesn't engage, maybe the boy will go away.  
  
The boy smiles and leans in, quieting his voice as if with a juicy secret. “I, uh. I know who you are.”  
  
Louis just stares.  
  
“You’re Louis Tomlinson? From One Direction? I mean, I know you just announced it to the whole train, but I knew. Before.”  
  
_Sigh_. “Okay, yeah, I am. You want me to sign something?” Louis instinctively reaches for his holocell. One tap and he can air-print his autograph onto the screen of any electronic device, piece of paper, stretch of skin, or item of clothing.  
  
Messy Hair chuckles, and it’s annoyingly charming. “No, I’m good. It’s just… really good to finally meet you.”  
  
He’s young — younger than the driver. Late teens to early twenties, probably. Maybe he's taking the train to school. It’s strange that he even knows One Direction. I mean, yeah, they were One Direction. But they weren’t The bloody Beatles. So why does he keep saying _“finally”_?  
  
“Yeah? You a fan, eh?” Louis asks.  
  
“Oh, totally. I’ve got all seven LPs on vinyl.”  
  
“Vinyl?!” Vinyls were extremely hard to come by these days. Music isn’t printed now; the entire industry went digital some years back. CDs are sold on E-Bay.com for hundreds of thousands of pounds. “You must’ve paid a fortune.”  
  
“No, they’re, uh, actually original recordings.” He chuckles again, a private joke that Louis is not in on. “Family heirloom.”  
  
Louis looks at the kid head-on for the first time. Tanned skin, bony fingers, long legs, a tangled mess of brown hair, a few freckles here and there… but his most striking feature is his sparkling green irises. They remind him of— “Do I know you?”  
  
The kid shakes his head. “No, weirdly. This is the first time we’ve met. On a train, no less. Figured you’d have a personal driver.”  
  
No one owns private transport any more, not with the United Nation’s strict laws on carbon emission now in effect — no one except the richest of the rich and the most important of the most important. The one percent of the one percent. “ _Me?_ ” he scoffs. “A driver?”  
  
“Well, yeah. I mean.” The kid scratches the back of his neck; he looks rather embarrassed. “Granddad has one.”  
  
“Is your granddad Blue Ivy Carter?”  
  
“Harry’s me granddad.”  
  
Did the bus crash? Has Louis died? No. No, the circuits in his brain just shorted. He’s back now.  
  
“Harry?”  
  
“Yes, sir.”  
  
“Don’t call me ‘sir’.”  
  
“Yes, sir. Sorry. Sorry.”  
  
A few moments longer to sort his emotions. Luckily, he’s old, so every emotion just looks like either gas or memory loss. “So, Harry, huh?”  
  
“Yes, s— Yes.”  
  
“You, uh, Lindsey’s boy?”  
  
“Yeah. Lindsey and Skyler.”  
  
“I liked Lindsey. He was a good lad. We had him and your aunts over to the house a lot. Me and Eleanor.”  
  
“Yeah, I’ve heard the stories.”  
  
“Did you hear the one about how your dad knocked out his two front teeth in the swimming pool?”  
  
Harry Styles’s grandson nods cheerily. “Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard that tale plenty. And I’ve never dived into the shallow end a day in my life.”  
  
“That’s good. That’s good.” So many questions. Louis has so many questions. Each one of them far too personal to ask Harry Styles’s young grandson. “So, how’s he doing?” Yeah, that one seems safe and appropriate.  
  
“He’s good, yeah! I mean, you know Granddad. He’s… Granddad.”  
  
Louis smiles for the first time since stepping foot on this fateful train. “Yeah, I know Harry.” And then the smile fades. “Or I… I _knew_ him.”  
  
Messy Hair visibly swallows. “You know, if I can be frank, Mr. Tomlinson—”  
  
“Louis.”  
  
“If I can be frank, Louis, I never really understood what happened between you two.” He lowers his voice again at Louis’s obvious discomfort. “I mean, I know what the tabloids said, and I know what the blogs said, and I know what _Granddad_ said… but I still don’t really get it.”  
  
An ache in Louis’s chest that he’d long attributed to acid reflux presents itself and Louis clears his throat, chokes it down, and signals to Messy Hair that this is not a safe or appropriate topic of conversation. “Well, I’m glad he’s doing good.” Louis tries to remember the last time he saw his old friend. Sabrina’s funeral, it must’ve been. And that was, what? Six years ago? “I know he was real beat up when Sabrina passed.”  
  
“Yeah. Aunt Sophia moved in with him, and they have all the dogs. He still takes his afternoon walk around the garden with Grandma every day. And the dogs.”  
  
Happy to have someone else to ask about besides Harry, Louis takes the opportunity. “What about Sophia? How are she and Rachelle doing?” The great and fabulous Sophia Styles, high fashion designer with looks on every runway from here to the newly colonized Antarctica. He actually has seen her since her mother’s funeral — he saw Sophia and her wife in London last year. He thought about ringing Harry but he didn’t.  
  
“They split up, actually,” Harry’s grandson reports. “It was amicable, I think. Rachelle got offered a job shooting photos somewhere in the Amazon, and when it was over she decided to stay there. And Aunt Sophia wanted to stay with Granddad.”  
  
“I see,” Louis says. He wants to comment something hopeful about how if their love is true they will find their way back to each other some day, but he knows from experience that it’s bullshit. “That’s a shame. And Ella?”  
  
“She just had a baby actually! Named him William.”  
  
“Oh, well tell her I said ‘congrats’.”  
  
“I definitely will.”  
  
A silence passes between them and Louis racks his brain for anyone else to ask about for fear of what kind of Larry bollocks might come out of the boy’s mouth. “And your parents?”  
  
A little crease forms between the kid’s brows. “Like, are they still together, or…?”  
  
“Yeah, sure.”  
  
“Yes, they are. And I’ve got two siblings — one older, one younger. A sister named Fiona, and the other’s non-binary. Their name’s Shaun.”  
  
“And I didn’t meet you at the funeral?” If he did, Louis honestly can’t remember.  
  
“No. But that’s okay. It was a tough day for everyone. So many people came to pay their respects. Granddad’s very beloved.”  
  
“Yes, he is that, ain’t he?”  
  
It’s at this point that the middle-aged woman with perfect highlights sitting in front of them that has been not-so-stealthily eavesdropping on their conversation ever since she boarded behind Louis decides to turn around and interject. “Excuse me, but didn’t you used to be in One Direction?”  
  
Louis reaches for his holocell again. “Yes.”  
  
The lady perks up, a cheeky grin taking over her face as if she hadn’t been eavesdropping. “You’re Zayn?”  
  
Messy Hair laughs and Louis sighs. “I’m Louis.”  
  
She nods, already snapping a photo on her holocell. “Yeah, the one who quit?”  
  
“No, that’s Zayn.”  
  
“Oh, okay.” She taps onto her holocell screen, probably already uploading the picture for all of her followers to holo-project into any space near them in real-time. “So you’re the blond one?”  
  
Louis’s hair is all but gone now, and what’s left of it is certainly white, but still. “No, that would be Niall.”  
  
“So you’re the small one?”  
  
He opens his mouth to protest, once again, but he knows she’s guessed correctly this time. “Yeah. That’s me.”  
  
“Cool. Thanks.”  
  
Messy Hair, whose face has gone completely red from holding in laughter, finally breaks as the woman faces forward. “So, this is what your life has become?”  
  
Louis spreads his arms to the world around him. “It is what it is.”  
  
The woman gets off at the next stop, and the kid takes it upon himself to move into the seat next to Louis, much to Louis’s bewilderment. “Pardon me for being so forward, sir, but I have to tell you something,” he says in a hushed tone while Louis readjusts himself into the window seat.  
  
Knowing into which murky waters this conversation is likely heading, Louis uncomfortably voices his consent. “Uh… okay?”  
  
“I know about you and Granddad.”  
  
Louis shakes his head. “Kid," he says, his voice stern, "I’m just gonna go ahead and stop you right there…”  
  
Much like his grandfather, the boy isn’t messing around. “I know you loved each other. And I know you were together, in private. And I know you weren’t allowed to be by your management because of the band’s image. I know pretty much everything.”  
  
Louis’s entire body has gone cold. Perhaps his blood has ceased pumping. He should hurry to the doctors'.  
  
“I’m only telling you this because I know you two had a falling out. And I don’t know what happened. But I know it would just mean the world to him to hear from you.”  
  
Louis finds his voice somewhere. “You don’t understand, kid.” He shakes his head again, this time a solemn action. “Harry doesn’t wanna see me.”  
  
“And what makes you so sure?”  
  
Louis doesn’t answer.  
  
“What happened, Louis? Why can’t you go see him?”  
  
Louis doesn’t answer.  
  
Messy Hair sighs. “Look, I know it’s none of my business. I’m only trying to help. He gets… Well, he gets lonely. And he talks about you… That’s how I know everything. He trusts me, for some reason.” He gets flustered; he backtracks. “I mean… not that he or you should have any reason not to. I’ve never told anyone. I would never tell anyone. So I guess that’s why he trusts me. Why he chose me. He says out of all his grandkids, I’m the one who reminds him of himself the most.”

Louis can agree with that. This kid is definitely just like a young Harry.  
  
“Even if you just, like, wanna give me a message, I’ll deliver it to him. Maybe I can convince _him_ to call _you_.”  
  
And suddenly Louis is angry. He remembers that communication is a two-way street, and he’s angry. “And why didn’t he? He never texted! Never called; never holo'd in...”  
  
“I don’t know.” The kid shrugs. “I wish I did. I wish I could understand… All he ever told me was that you broke his heart. But he won’t tell me why or how or when. Maybe he thinks you don’t wanna hear from him, either.” He thinks for a moment before continuing. “Or maybe he was just looking out for me, like he knew this day would come where I met you on a train.” He laughs once.  
  
Louis isn’t sure that he consciously decides to tell this boy his story. But one look at his youthful face and Louis knows he only means well. And he’s never told this story before, not to anyone. He takes a deep breath, or as deep as his shallow lungs will allow.  
  
“We stopped seeing each other when the band went on hiatus,” he beings softly. “We all had plans to do solo stuff; everyone seemed pretty supportive of each other. No one knew how big Harry’s solo career was gonna take off. I mean, we all kinda suspected he’d be successful. But no one knew to what enormous magnitude.  
  
"Flash forward a few years, the four of us come back together to make album six. We do a worldwide tour, the whole bit. I’ve got Freddie at this point, and me and Eleanor are off again. Harry and I just kind of picked up where we left off. It was organic, really. We didn’t even really think about it. We never talked about going public, either, and maybe that was just out of habit, or maybe I was scared that I’d hurt his career. He was such a big star, brighter than all of us.  
  
"Both the tour and the album do really well, and we decide to do another a few years later. Zayn signs on for this one; maybe he needed the extra cash, I don’t know.” Louis laughs in spite of himself. “We just all decided to bury the hatchet. Things were good again; we were all lads again. I’m with Eleanor again; we get married. Harry meets Sabrina and pops out your sister. I have Jaiden. Zayn’s still just Zayn, sowing his wild oats, never gonna settle down; Niall’s got MJ and knocks her up… Liam and Cheryl are two kids in and still won’t tie the knot.”  
  
The air in the train gets colder at the first mention of Liam. Louis looks down at his lap; his hands have wrung themselves together. “After we lost Liam, we couldn’t go on with it. We canceled the remainder of what they were calling ‘The Comeback Tour’, not that we ever went anywhere. He was our backbone; without him we were just four tatted-up blokes with microphones.”

The kid speaks up out of duty. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I wasn’t alive yet, so I don’t remember. But I know Granddad really loved Liam and how close you all were. I can understand how difficult it must’ve been.”  
  
Never the best at processing his feelings, Louis opts to continue the story instead of dwell on this particular subject. “We weren’t One Direction any longer. We all went back to our families, picked our solo careers up where we’d left them lying unattended in the corners of our sitting rooms. A few months after the funeral, Harry shows up at my door. Eleanor’s off on business, thank God. Freddie’s at his mum’s; Jaiden’s with the Nanny.”  
  
Louis didn’t remember deciding to stop talking. He relives the moment in his head, the moment that ended them, over and over in his head just like he's done every day since. He only realizes he’s not voicing his thoughts when prompted by the boy who sits beside him.  
  
“What happened?”  
  
“I don’t know how he managed to sneak away without his body guards. To this day I still don’t know where Sabrina thought he was. But he was here, on my front porch, in London, England. And he was in tears. My first thought was that something tragic had happened, and how I don’t think I could’ve lived through any more tragedies at that point in my life, and I was ready to just lay down and die. But that’s not why he came.”  
  
“Why did he come?”  
  
Oh, he must’ve stopped talking again.  
  
Louis knows that once he says it out loud, it will be out there in the universe, and it will be a secret known to no longer just he and Harry, and he doesn’t know what headlines await him if this boy leaks the information for some cash. But Louis has braved through much worse, and, at seventy years old, he just doesn’t bloody care anymore.  
  
“He asked me to marry him.”  
  
Harry’s grandson doesn’t try to mask his astonishment — it is made very clear by his widened eyes and his fallen jaw.  
  
“He told me that when Liam died, he couldn’t imagine how he would’ve survived had it been me instead. He said he didn’t care what it did to his image, to his career. That he didn’t want to spend another minute living an ocean apart. That he’d run away with me if that’s what I wanted to do. That when either of us died, he wanted us to have truly lived first. It was really very poetic. That was the songwriter in him come out, I guess.”

“But you told him no.”  
  
“I just couldn’t. This wasn’t 2012 Louis and Harry… we had wives and children! I couldn’t abandon mine and I knew that if he’d been in his right mind he wouldn’t abandon his, either. I knew he was still messed up about Liam. I knew that if Liam hadn’t have… then Harry would’ve never chosen me over his family… Sabrina and their kids and their home in New York and his career!”  
  
Louis is shaking. An un-wrinkled hand covers his. “It’s okay. You did what you thought was best. He never blamed you. I know. I know.”  
  
“I thought you said you didn’t know this story.”  
  
“I didn’t. But the way he talks about you… There’s no way he resents you. There’s no way he doesn’t still love you.”  
  
_Love_ , he’d said. Impossible. They’re old men now.  
  
“So, now you know.” Louis pulls his hand out from under the kid’s. “What you do with that information is up to you.”  
  
“I’m not gonna tell anybody,” the kid promises. “I swear.”  
  
Louis looks into his familiar green eyes and he knows the boy’s telling the truth. “I know.” And then he's reminded of another boy he loves. "You should meet my grandson, Miller. I think you two would really hit it off."  
  
Messy Hair blushes. "We actually follow each other on Holofy," he says shyly. "We have this joke about starting a band with the others. Calling ourselves Grand Direction."  
  
Louis laughs aloud. "Brilliant."  
  
As fate would have it, and not a minute sooner, the train comes to a smooth, clean stop. The screen above the windshield lights up; it’s Louis’s stop. “Well, this is me.” He stands, and Messy Hair stands, too.  
  
“Call him,” he begs. “I know you and Eleanor divorced years ago. But even if it’s just as friends. You’ve got nothing to lose.”  
  
Louis steps past him, and he must soak up some of his optimism as their shoulders brush. “I will,” he promises.  
  
The boy follows him to the front of the bus, presumably to make sure Louis doesn’t fall down the stairs on his way out. Louis has gifted him his deepest, darkest secret — the kid owes him this kindness, at the very least. One hand on the rail and one foot down a step, Louis realizes something, stops, and turns. “Kid, I never did get your name.”  
  
Harry’s grandson smiles, and it is luminous. “It’s Louis.”  
  
As the train pulls away from the curb, Louis Tomlinson air-prints his autograph onto Louis Styles's holotab screen.


End file.
